Policy News Update

UN PLEDGES FUNDS TO CLEAN UP MEDITERRANEAN OIL SPILL

The United Nations (UN) Environment Program pledged 50 million euros,
about $64 million, to help clean up and contain a major Mediterranean
oil spill caused by the conflict in Lebanon.

The 87-mile-long slick, described by experts as the worst environmental
disaster in Lebanese history, stained Lebanon's shores after Israeli
warplanes bombed an oil storage depot at Jiyeh, about 19 miles south of
Beirut, in July.

The continuing hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah barred marine
experts from inspecting the most severely affected areas. But the
recent cease-fire cleared the way for the start of an international
effort to clean up and contain the spill, said United Nations, European
and maritime officials.

"Now that the bombs have stopped and the guns have silenced," said Achim
Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program,
"we have a chance to rapidly assess the true magnitude of the problem
and finally mobilize the support for an oil cleanup and restoration of
the coastline."

Up to 15,000 tons of heavy fuel poured into the Mediterranean after the
Jiyeh bombings, also polluting the Syrian coast and threatening other
countries. The spillage could total 35,000 tons, close to the 1989 spill
from the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska, officials said.

Environmental organizations say that endangered Mediterranean wildlife,
like the green turtle, whose eggs hatch on Lebanese and Syrian beaches
in July, faces an imminent threat. They say the spill - a cocktail of
highly toxic substances - could damage tourism, rob fishermen of their
livelihood and endanger human health, with a heightened risk of cancer
because the fuel that spilled contained carcinogens like benzene.

Under the United Nations-sponsored plan, a number of Mediterranean
countries will contribute personnel, training and equipment for the
cleanup. Kuwait and Norway have already sent chemicals and equipment to
clean up the oil, while the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) has promised $200,000 for the effort, which also
includes aerial surveys to assess the extent of the spill.

KANSAS VOTERS OUST CRITICS OF EVOLUTION FROM SCHOOL BOARD

Proponents of intelligent design (ID), who brought international
attention to Kansas by approving state academic standards calling
evolution into question, lost control of the state school board in
primaries.

As a result of the vote, board members and candidates who believe
evolution is well-supported by evidence will have a 6-4 majority.
Evolution skeptics had entered the election with a 6-4 majority.

Critics of Kansas's science standards worried that if ID proponents had
retained the board's majority, it would have led to attempts in other
states to copy the Kansas standards.

A suburban Atlanta school district is locked in a legal dispute over its
putting stickers in 35,000 biology textbooks declaring evolution "a
theory, not a fact."

In 2005, in Dover, PA, voters ousted school-board members who had
required the biology curriculum to include mention of intelligent
design. A federal judge struck down the policy, declaring intelligent
design is a form of religion.

A poll by six news organizations in 2005 suggested about half of Kansans
thought evolution should be taught alongside intelligent design.

Control of the school board has slipped into, out of and back into
conservative Republicans' hands since 1998, resulting in anti-evolution
standards in 1999, evolution-friendly ones in 2001 and anti-evolution
ones again in 2005.

ARMY CORPS RE-EXAMINES ITS DITCH REGULATIONS

The Army Corps of Engineers will re-examine its regulation of ditches in
light of the Supreme Court's fractured decision on two key wetland
cases.

The corps withdrew its "Philadelphia Ditch Rule" in the wake of the
Supreme Court's June ruling in Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The rule asserted the Corps' jurisdiction
over ditches as "navigable waters" under the Clean Water Act in
Delaware, southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) hailed the withdrawal
of the ditch rule as a victory for housing affordability. The group
contends that excessive regulatory costs -- which include the cost of
complying with rules regarding wetlands -- often top $40,000 per house.
The group said that it supports protecting water quality, but takes
issue with the Corps' interpretation of its jurisdiction.

The Army Corps says the rule was withdrawn pending guidance from
Washington on how to proceed after Rapanos.

The joint Supreme Court cases yielded five opinions totaling more than
100 pages that resulted in little consensus regarding the central
question of whether the Clean Water Act protects wetlands adjacent to
small tributaries that flow into larger water bodies.

A plurality of justices agreed in principle that the Army Corps and the
Environmental Protection Agency misinterpreted the law when they denied
permits to two Michigan landowners on wetlands that are not connected to
"navigable waters." But Justice Kennedy disagreed in a concurring
opinion that called on the Corps to consider in each case whether the
wetlands at issue possess "a significant nexus" with navigable waters.

Justice Scalia wrote that the phrase "waters of the United States," as
written in the Clean Water Act, was not intended to include ditches,
canals and other channels through which water flows intermittently or
ephemerally.

BUSH APPROVES TAX BREAKS FOR EASEMENT DONATIONS

President Bush signed pension legislation that includes a major new tax
break for landowners who donate conservation easements.

The language was included in the Pension Protection Act, passed by
Congress before the August recess. The Act will allow landowners who
donate easements to deduct 50 percent of their income, up from the
current 30 percent. Qualifying farmers and ranchers will be allowed to
deduct 100 percent of their income.

The Bush administration says the language will help further the goals of
cooperative conservation.

"It helps fulfill the president's commitment to landowners, sportsmen
and conservationists to provide substantial new incentives to landowners
who want to commit their land to open space while keeping our nation's
working farms and ranches working," said Jim Connaughton, chairman of
the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

EPA PROPOSAL TIES MERCURY STANDARDS TO FISH TISSUE

States regulating mercury discharges to lakes and streams would base
water quality criteria on concentrations of the toxic metal detected in
fish tissue instead of in the water itself under a new U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal.

The draft guidance is aimed at reconciling what for many states has been
a two-tiered system for regulating mercury -- with a set of water
samples to assess a water body's health and tissue samples to set human
health standards for fish consumption.

The draft comes five years after EPA set new water quality criteria for
methylmercury, the poisonous form of elemental mercury that accumulates
in water and aquatic organisms. The draft "marks EPA's first issuance
of a water quality criterion expressed as a fish and shellfish tissue
value rather than as an ambient water quality value," the agency said.
The proposal is open for public comment until Oct. 11, 2006.

John Wathen, Assistant Chief of standards and health protection for
EPA's water office, said the guidance should help states overcome the
problem of measuring tiny concentrations of mercury in water.

"In many places, you have mercury appearing in fish tissue that's many,
many times higher than what is occurring in the water column," Walten
said in an interview. "This is an attempt to cut to the chase and get
the meaningful number that relates to human health, and that is
methylmercury."

High concentrations of mercury can lead to a waterway being designated
"impaired" for fishing, swimming or other human contact. Under the Clean
Water Act, waters designated as impaired are subject to "total maximum
daily load" requirements, which target pollutants from both point and
non-point sources.

HAWAII BIOPHARMING PERMITS ILLEGAL, JUDGE RULES

The Agriculture Department (USDA) illegally approved permits for four
companies to grow hundreds of acres of biopharmaceutical crops in
Hawaii, a federal judge ruled.

Judge Michael Seabright of the U.S. District Court for Hawaii said
USDA's decision to issue the permits in 2001 without conducting
environmental studies was "arbitrary and capricious."

Even if USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, which issued the
permits, was correct in its assertion that no habitats or species listed
as endangered were harmed by the plantings, then the agency's actions
are still "tainted" because they failed to comply with a mandatory
procedural requirement, Seabright said.

The environmental group Earthjustice sued the agency shortly after the
permits were issued to ProdiGene, Monsanto, the Hawaii Agriculture
Research Center and Garst Seed to carry out biopharming until 2003 on
800 acres of controlled sites using sugar cane.

Between 1991 and 2005, the government has issued more than 90 permits
for biopharming nationwide, according to USDA.

COLOMBIA SPRAYS HERBICIDES IN NATIONAL PARK

Despite environmental concerns, Colombian authorities for the first time
used U.S.-supplied planes to spray a pristine national park where
leftist rebels have grown coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

Anti-narcotics police said they chemically fumigated the Sierra Macarena
National Park, clearing its entire 11,370 acres of coca. The spraying
destroyed coca capable of producing 17.5 tons of high-grade cocaine.

Colombian authorities had previously instituted a manual eradication
drive in the Sierra Macarena National Park, but President Alvaro Uribe
announced the park would be fumigated by air after a bomb planted by
leftist rebels exploded on Aug. 2, killing six peasants hired by the
government to uproot the coca by hand. In addition to those killed by
the bomb, 26 other works have been killed in the park since December
2005.

Uribe said he wants to double aerial spraying, and his top military
advisers want to expand the practice to the 11 other parks known to have
coca.

Washington has long urged Uribe to extend spraying to parks and provided
the glyphosate herbicide, as well as Black Hawk helicopters used for
protection, during the missions.

But the chemical fumigation of a park in one of the world's most
biodiverse countries drew sharp criticism from those who contend that
the spraying of herbicides harms the environment and causes health
problems for those living in the area.

"Those who think fumigating La Macarena, and perhaps other parks, will
wipe out coca production are wrong," the normally pro-government
Colombian newspaper El Tiempo said. "Instead, there will be more coca,
and less park, as rebels destroy more forests, deeper inside the park,
to continue planting."

Sources: Energy and Environment Daily; Globe and Mail; Greenwire; L.A. Times; New York Times

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